The Moment of Eternity
Time is the greatest gift human being has been ever given. It gives us an opportunity to evolve, to appreciate the moment of our existence and to separate past, present and future. It gives love and sexuality an opportunity to develop into something new and strong – new life – continuation of humanity. On the other hand, time is the greatest foe of human race, because it characterizes the process of dying, decay, destruction and final ending of human existence. Time also steals youth, strength, love and beauty. It slowly deprives us of ourselves. The aim of the present essay is to analyze the issue of time in the Early Modern love lyrics and emphasize conceptual differences in time description on the examples of five poems. These five poems include Herrick’s “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time”, Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress”, Marlowe’s “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love”, Ralegh’s “Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd” and Shakespeare’s Sonnet 55.
Time can be felt and emphasized in various ways, but it is usually outlined through the experiences of youth and desire to accomplish as much as possible while there is still time. For the love lyrics this means an opportunity to convince the audience of appropriateness of some actions while discourage from the others. In Herrick’s poem, the concept of time is shown through the appropriateness of actions in the due time. In this regard, the author argues that virgin girls should “be not coy, but use your time, and while ye may go marry” (Herrick 64). Thus, he claims that beauty of youth should not be wasted for the morality and prejudices of the society or vanity of families, but should be favored by the happy couple in full – the girl and her chosen husband, gathering “ye rosebuds while ye can” (Herrick 64). The message of appropriateness of time for actions, while an individual is still young, is achieved through the contrasting of glorious images of youth and joy with gloomy views of death and waste. The image of flower is of the best symbolic depiction of youth and ruinous impact of time on it – it is giving smiles at one moment and is dying the next one. Unlike many love poets, Herrick was not creating fantasy to make reality look better or worse, which was intentionally done by Marvell; he showed the duality of time and that it was to be accepted in all its complexity and complications for the youth and sensuality of love. Thus, he is realistic in the narration of the poem.
Marvell’s concept of time is more case-oriented and purposeful from the point of seduction of a young girl by a more experienced lover. Unlike Herrick, Marvell refers to two types of time – eternity and present moment, which correspond to two different types of love – platonic, slow, gradual courtship and passionate, insatiable, inflammable instant love-making. In a wider perspective, he contrasts the fantasy of the romantic love with the accessibility of the real love affair and subsequent love-making. In this regard, times is used as a catalyzing element for girl’s positive response – raising in her an urgency to live life at present moment mainly due to her vanity and desire to remain wanted since her beauty might eventually vanish. This is achieved through contrast and comparison of eternity in the first part of the poem, threat of faded beauty and subsequent promise of passionate and immediate pleasure as reward for the cruelty of reality.
Similar to two first poems is the work of Marlowe, who also emphasized the importance of immediateness of passionate and sensual love. In his case, the main emphasis was placed on the natural essence of sensual love, irrespective of conditionality of time and space and society. In this regard, the time of the poem is static; there are no references to the past or the future; and the present moment is all what is offered to a girl. In this context, the eternity-moment is described in the sweetness of love for which every day would be the same, as beautiful as “each May morning” (Marlowe 45). Just as Marvell, the shepherd aims at seducing the girl with promises of picturesque images of sensual nature and love-making, suggesting that he “will make thee bend of roses, and a thousand fragrant poises” (Marlowe 45). In this regard, the author, just as Marvell, places emphasis on the importance of images and sensuality of perception. On the other hand, unlike Marvell, Marlowe pays little attention to the application of time theme as supportive argument in seduction and explanation of the importance of the immediate passion and living this moment. Just as Herrick, he did not pay much attention to the role of punctuation and contribution of pace to the main theme of his poem. On the other hand, unlike two other poems, he emphasized the main idea of his poem through repetition of the focal lines. In this regard, he repeated: “come live with me and be my love” (Marlowe 45). The meaning of this repletion aims at showing that there is nothing else in shepherd’s intentions but this offer. This repetition is also intended to remind the audience of the song, which was initially the form of the classic Pastorals.
While Marlowe’s offer to the girl was quite plain in its nature and aimed mainly at immediate sensual love-making, irrespective of time and consequences; Ralegh’s nymph’s reply was entirely opposite. Just as Herrick, Ralegh referred to the realistic side of love and its consequences. In this regard, nymph’s response is conducted in the form of conditional sentences, challenging the very realistic nature of shepherd’s offer: “if all the world and love were young, and truth in every shepherd’s tongue” (Ralegh 43). The contrast between shepherd’s fantasy and nymph’s reality is achieved through the description of ruinous influence of time on everything the shepherd was promising to give. In this context, she argues that “thy cap, thy kirtle, and thy poises soon break, soon wither, soon forgotten – in folly ripe, in reason rotten” (Ralegh 43). The images of timeliness of existence and inappropriateness of wasting time for foolish offers are further supported by the image of rottenness both in sense of human final decay after death and the wrongness of shepherd’s intentions and his offer. In this regard, time plays also the role of morality and appropriateness of human actions. In this regard, the role of time can be compared to Herrick’s perception of it. Particular feature of poem’s pace is that it slows when the images of decay and morality of the human behavior are introduced.
While all the previous authors used time in order to show temporality of human existence and argue for certain mode of actions – either appropriateness of early marriage or devotion to the sensual love, William Shakespeare placed love between two people on the first place; in this case the time theme was only a background for the eternal power of love. In this regard, he considered that life or death mattered little and time, which was all-powerful over those matters, had no power over one thing – love between two people. In Sonnet 55, the meaning of time is not in threatening or encouraging his beloved one to certain actions; the time is used to show the immortality of the image and memories of his beloved one through his poetry. In this regard, Shakespeare argues that “not marble, nor gilded monuments of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme; but you shall shine brighter in this contents than unswept stone besmear’d with sluttish time” (Shakespeare 47). In this regard, time means nothing for him, just as for Marlowe’s shepherd. This does not mean that Shakespeare’s ignorance of time is the same as its static nature in shepherd’s case. Shakespeare’s time is moving; it consists of past, present and future, which is shown through frailty of monuments, buildings, “works of masonry”, human lives under Mars’ sword and ruinous power of time; and endurance of memories “in the eyes of all posterity” (Shakespeare 47). Shakespeare shows that everything is changeable in the natural course of life except for one thing – love and memories of his mistress, who shall “dwell in lovers’ eyes” forever (Shakespeare 47).
Works Cited
Herrick, Robert. “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time”. Classical literature and its
reception: an anthology. Ed. DeMaria Robert. Oxford: Blackwell, 2007, 64. Print.
Marlowe, Christopher. “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love”. Classical literature and its
reception: an anthology. Ed. DeMaria Robert. Oxford: Blackwell, 2007, 45. Print.
Marvell, Andrew. “To His Coy Mistress” Classical literature and its reception: an
anthology. Ed. DeMaria Robert. Oxford: Blackwell, 2007, 86. Print.
Ralegh, Walter. “Nymph’s Reply to The Shepherd”. Classical literature and its reception: an
anthology. Ed. DeMaria Robert. Oxford: Blackwell, 2007, 43. Print.
Shakespeare, William. “Sonnet 55”. Classical literature and its reception: an anthology. Ed.
DeMaria Robert. Oxford: Blackwell, 2007, 47. Print.
